About the artist

Ashes Divide is the name used for the solo project of American rock musician Billy Howerdel, guitarist of the alternative rock band A Perfect Circle, where he is the primary songwriter, musician, producer, and vocalist. The project's debut album, Keep Telling Myself It's Alright, was released in 2008. Howerdel formed a live band and toured in support of the album through the rest of the year, but the project fell to the wayside after A Perfect Circle reformation in 2010. Howerdel frequently discussed working on new material for the project as recently as 2017, but no further material had been released, with Howerdel instead focusing on A Perfect Circle's fourth album, Eat the Elephant, released on April 20, 2018.

Albums

Keep Telling Myself It's Alright is the debut studio album by American rock band Ashes Divide, the solo-project by A Perfect Circle guitarist Billy Howerdel. While efforts towards a Howerdel solo album were started even back in his time in A Perfect Circle during touring in support of their 2003 album Thirteenth Step, commitments to A Perfect Circle and other projects, along with some difficult recording sessions, pushed the album's release out to April 8, 2008. Its first single, "The Stone," entered radio circulation in January of that year.

Similar Artists

A Perfect Circle is an American rock supergroup formed in 1999 by guitarist Billy Howerdel and Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan. A Perfect Circle has released four studio albums, the first three during the early 2000s: Mer de Noms, their debut album in 2000, and followed up by Thirteenth Step in 2003; then in 2004, Emotive—an album of radically re-worked cover songs titles. Shortly after Emotive's release, the band went on hiatus; Keenan returned to Tool and started up solo work under the band name Puscifer; and Howerdel released a solo album, Keep Telling Myself It's Alright, under the moniker Ashes Divide. Band activity was sporadic in the following years; the band reformed in 2010, and played live shows on and off between 2010 and 2013, but fell into inactivity after the release of their greatest hits album, Three Sixty, and a live album box set, A Perfect Circle Live: Featuring Stone and Echo in late 2013. The band reformed in 2017 to record a fourth album, Eat the Elephant, which was released on April 20, 2018.

Living Syndication is a hard rock band from Massachusetts started by frontman Pervez Taufiq in 2001. They've been described as "tailored blends of Alice In Chains and Tool with enough modernization to attract a younger fan-base"Initially a solo project, it then evolved to being a band which has released two albums which have had moderate success. Two songs in particular "Choke" and "13 Minutes" have been confused by many A Perfect Circle fans as being unreleased or bonus A Perfect Circle tracks from their Emotive CD. These two tracks have been the cause of some confusion amongst fans who've speculated that the tracks were in fact released by Maynard James Keenan on a side project that he was working on at the time. In fact, they were renamed on the file sharing network Limewire and thousands of fans had downloaded the tracks to get an early release of the Emotive album only to find themselves with copies of an upcoming release from Living Syndication. Since that time, Living Syndication has been receiving a steady influx of fans as those files are still in circulation.

Fair to Midland was an American progressive rock band based in Dallas, Texas. According to the band's official website, their name comes from "…an old Texan play on the term 'fair to middling'." The band produced two self-released albums before signing to Serjical Strike; System of a Down's Serj Tankian vanity label at Universal Republic. There, they released their only major record label album, Fables from a Mayfly, in 2007. While the album broke into the Billboard 200, they eventually parted ways with Serjical Strike and later released their fourth album, Arrows and Anchors in July 2011. Tentative plans for a fifth album had been discussed at the end of the Arrow and Anchors touring cycle, but the band became inactive in 2013.

Reconstruction requires deconstruction. The institutions must be razed in order to clear space for the future to flourish. You tear down the old and build up the new. Filter founder, singer, guitarist, and producer Richard Patrick knows this dance well. It’s what established the group as a multiplatinum industrial alternative luminary, and it catalyzed their seventh full-length album, Crazy Eyes [Wind-up Records].

“Filter is the mind,” he exclaims. “It’s your interpretation or my interpretation. Our thing is to look at people’s unexplainable behavior and assess it, using sound. It’s a way to approximate the insanity of the human condition. The reason this record is so fucking heavy and strange is it’s exactly the opposite of what’s popular. It’s not pretty. It’s not cute. It’s real.”

Richard completely immersed himself in the process after getting off the road in support of 2013’s The Sun Comes Out Tonight—which moved over 8,500 copies first-week, 10 million streams to date and a Top 13 radio track with “What Do You Say.” The record gained critical acclaim, garnering attention from Loudwire, Hollywood Reporter, Fader, Rolling Stone, Blabbermouth and also landing high-profile commercial syncs including Diablo 3 (“Burn It”) and WWE (“What Do You Say” & “Burn It”). Their brooding cover of The Turtles’ classic, “Happy Together” was featured in the trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s 2012 The Great Gatsby.

In what can only be seen as a nod to Filter’s debut, Short Bus, the new record Crazy Eyes eschews the signature wall of guitars heard on their last release and breathes with a stark, industrialized menace that’s equally haunting and hypnotic.

Rather than partner with a producer, he took the reins and oversaw production himself. “You recognize it’s us from my aggression and singing, but the instrumentation had to change,” he admits. “It wasn’t about just stacking guitars like we might’ve done on the last couple records. There are way more electronics and sound design.”

As a result, Richard’s vision emerges with claws out on the stirring opener “Mother E.” A brooding synth builds in tandem with his rasp just before a cathartic scream. Everything subsides to just voice and cello as he sings, “I’ve got nothing but rage to kill the pain.”

“It’s the heaviest song I’ve ever written,” he grins. “We’ve seen people in the U.S. be as cruel as they possibly can be in the last few years. What is this phenomenon? I’d never intentionally go out and hurt someone. I can’t understand that mentality. My art is the only way I can communicate. We know what insanity looks like and what it is, but what does it sound like? ‘Mother E’ is what I think it sounds like.”

On the other end of the spectrum, the first single “Take Me To Heaven” rides a pulse-pounding gallop into an entrancing and ponderous refrain. “I was looking into the eyes of my father when he was passing away, and I held his hand,” Richard recalls. “He glanced at me really quickly, focused on me, had this look of gratitude, and then he slipped away. I was almost like, ‘I hope you’re going to heaven.’ Scientifically, the idea doesn’t make any sense to me, but if there is a heaven, take me there. That’s what happened.”

Whether it’s the resounding echo of “Welcome To The Suck (Destiny Not Luck)” or the thrash-y grind of “Kid Blue From The Short Bus, Drunk Bunk,” Crazy Eyes continuously shapeshifts, maintaining a marked intensity throughout. The fans got to experience this firsthand with the launch of Filter’s PledgeMusic campaign, which was run in conjunction with Wind-up Records, for the album. Richard would regularly update them on studio progress and even preview ideas, giving the band’s diehard audience unprecedented access.

“The people who believe in the music become a part of the process,” he says. “That’s amazing. It’s like the fans get the chance to give you their seal of approval before they’ve even heard it. It was a lot of great feedback. We cut out the middle man and established a direct line of communication.”

It’s just another step on a career defined by smashing boundaries. In 1995, Filter emerged as one of industrial’s most vibrant, vivid, and vitriolic voices on Short Bus. The record introduced the world to the immortal “Hey Man Nice Shot” and eventually went platinum. Title of Record would reach the same heights on the fuel of singles “Take A Picture” and “Welcome to the Fold” as following albums The Amalgamut [2002], Anthems for the Damned [2008], and The Trouble with Angels [2010] would see them continue to evolve. Along the way, they’d receive high-profile placements, including “(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do” with The Crystal Method on The Spawn Soundtrack. Most recently the album, The Sun Comes Out Tonight (2013) drew critical and peer acclaim with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor even taking to Twitter to proclaim his admiration.

Ultimately, it all comes back to the fact that Richard remains honest. “I’m completely into this for the music,” he leaves off. “Being yourself is the most important thing. I authentically went places I’d never gone before. That was from my heart. I’m trying to be as genuine as possible to what Filter is. It’s about sounding fucking different, forward, and original.”

Atomship is a four-piece alternative metal band currently composed of Joey Culver, Chad Kent, Roy Williams, and Jared Slade, best known for their 2004 single "Pencil Fight". Nathan Slade was the band's original guitarist until his death in December 2009. The band was known as Watership Down in 2002, before changing their name to Atomship that year. Due to original vocalist Derek Pardoe's anxiety, Joey Culver took over his place for the recording of their debut album The Crash of '47, released in 2004. Atomship was later dropped from Wind-Up Records, due to poor record sales, which led until the band's disbandment later that year. In 2006, Atomship reformed as AtomshipDown. In 2010, AtomshipDown reverted their name back to Watership Down. In 2017, the band reformed Atomship with vocalist Joey Culver.

Karnivool are an Australian rock band formed in Perth in 1997. The group currently consists of Ian Kenny on vocals, Drew Goddard and Mark Hosking on guitar, Jon Stockman on bass, and Steve Judd on drums. Karnivool emerged from a band Kenny and Goddard formed during high school. Their third album Asymmetry was released on 19 July 2013.

Deftones is an American alternative metal band from Sacramento, California. It was formed in 1988 by Chino Moreno, Stephen Carpenter, Abe Cunningham and Dominic Garcia. During their first five years, the band's lineup changed several times, but stabilized in 1993 when Cunningham rejoined after his departure in 1990; by this time, Chi Cheng was bassist. The lineup remained stable for fifteen years, with the exception of keyboardist and turntablist Frank Delgado being added in 1999. The band is known as one of the most experimental groups to have come from the alternative metal scene, and are sometimes dubbed by critics as "the Radiohead of metal".Deftones have released eight albums since their inception. After the lineup settled in 1993, the band secured a recording contract with Maverick Records, and subsequently released their debut album Adrenaline in 1995. Promoting the album by touring exhaustively with other bands in the scene, Deftones managed to gain a dedicated fan base through word of mouth. Their sophomore album Around the Fur was released in 1997, reached chart positions along with its singles, and became the band's first to receive certification from the RIAA.

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